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Amid criticism, Columbia University announces a new research center in Tel Aviv
(JTA) — Columbia University has announced that it will launch a “Global Center” in Tel Aviv amid dueling letters from faculty supporting and opposing the decision.
The university’s Global Centers act as hubs for local scholars and researchers to work with the New York City school’s faculty, students and alumni to study and address a range of local and global issues. The center in Tel Aviv will join 10 others across the globe.
The Tel Aviv Global Center will enable the university “to connect with individuals and institutions, as well as with the alumni community in Israel, drawing them closer to the ongoing life of the University,” Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger said in a statement Monday. He added that the center will focus on climate change, technology, entrepreneurship, arts, the humanities, biology, health and medicine.
Columbia already has ties to Tel Aviv through Tel Aviv University, with which it began a dual degree program in 2019, despite also facing faculty and student objections.
For decades, Columbia has been the site of heated debate among both faculty and students over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and in the months leading up to the announcement, a group of Columbia faculty urged the school to halt plans for a center in Tel Aviv. In February, law professor Katherine Franke began circulating an open letter against the center, which as of Tuesday morning had received 95 faculty signatures, according to the Columbia Daily Spectator, a student publication.
The letter references accusations of Israeli human rights violations, as well as the policies of Israel’s governing coalition, which includes far-right parties and which has put forward a proposal for a judicial overhaul that has led to massive street protests and upheaval in the country.
“We are particularly concerned that Columbia University would take the bold step of opening a Global Center in Tel Aviv at this particular moment, with the newly seated government that is widely, if not almost universally, regarded as the most conservative, reactionary, right wing government in Israel’s history,” the letter reads. “For Columbia to preemptively invest in a new Global Center in Israel at the very moment when the domestic and international community is pulling away as part of a concerted and vehement objection to the new government’s policies would render Columbia not only an outlier, but a collaborator in those very policies.”
While the letter notes broadly that Global Centers have served as a “liberal academic footprint” in other countries with restrictive regimes, it does not reference the individual human rights records of any of the other countries where the centers are located. The 10 existing centers are in Amman, Jordan; Athens, Greece; Beijing; Istanbul; Mumbai, India; Nairobi, Kenya; Paris; Rio de Janeiro; Santiago, Chile and Tunis, Tunisia.
The letter also argues that Israel would ban Columbia alumni and affiliates based on their citizenship, identity and politics.
Franke herself was barred from Israel in 2018, along with attorney Vincent Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, based on accusations that they supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, against Israel. Both denied the accusations at the time, according to Haaretz. Around that same time, according to an opinion column by Roger Cohen in The New York Times, Bollinger was in Israel to discuss plans for the Global Center.
The letter also notes “substantial concern about the power of donor money to direct major decisions, such as the establishment of this Global Center in Tel Aviv, in lieu of consultation with the faculty.” The letter does not name any specific donors or detail how the alleged donor pressure was deployed.
In response to the opposition letter, faculty supporters of the Tel Aviv Global Center composed their own statement. They argue that the centers are independent of their governments’ host countries and do not signal approval or disapproval of each country’s government.
“The decision to locate a center in all of these countries was never determined by political considerations, but rather to enhance Columbia as a global research university,” the statement reads. “For a country its size, Israel has an unusually rich infrastructure of universities and other scholarly, cultural, religious, scientific, technological, legal, and artistic resources that have intellectual connections to every school at Columbia University.”
The statement of support, signed by more than 170 full-time faculty, was written by political science professor Ester R. Fuchs; Nicholas Lemann, dean emeritus of the Columbia Journalism School; David M. Schizer, dean emeritus and professor at the Columbia Law School and law professor Matthew C. Waxman.
The supportive letter says that Israel has a better human rights record than other countries that host the university’s centers — such as China or Jordan — and adds that many signatories do not approve of Israel’s current government.
“One does not have to support the policies of the current government of Israel — and many of us do not — to recognize that singling out Israel in this way is unjustified,” the letter says. “To apply a separate standard to Israel — and Israel alone — would understandably be perceived by many as a form of discrimination.”
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Pope Leo Says Those Who Wage War Are Thieves Stealing Away Our Peaceful Future
Pope Leo XIV looks on as he meets with Catholic religious education teachers attending a national meeting organised by the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, April 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Leo on Sunday described those who wage wars and appropriate the earth’s resources as thieves who rob the world of a peaceful future, issuing a warning about the use of nuclear power on the anniversary of the Chernobyl reactor accident.
Ukraine is commemorating the 40th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear disaster on Sunday amid lingering fears that Russia’s four-year-old war could spark a repeat of the tragedy.
In his weekly address after the Angelus prayer, the Pontiff said the Chernobyl accident had left a mark on humankind’s collective conscience.
“It remains a warning over the use of ever more powerful technologies,” the Pope, who has just returned from a 10-day tour across four African nations, said.
“I hope that at all decision-making levels, wisdom and responsibility always prevail, so that atomic power can always be used to support life and peace,” he added.
Commenting on the Gospel of the day, which contained the metaphor of a sheep thief, Pope Leo said thieves came under many appearances, listing as examples “superficial lifestyles driven by consumerism,” prejudices and wrong ideas.
“And let’s not forget also those thieves who, by plundering the earth’s resources, by fighting bloody wars or feeding evil in whichever form, are simply taking away from all of us the chance of a future of peace and serenity,” he added.
Leo, the first US pontiff, has attracted the ire of President Donald Trump after becoming more outspoken against war and despotism.
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UK’s Starmer and Trump Discuss ‘Urgent Need’ to Restore Shipping in Strait of Hormuz
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump (not pictured) hold a bilateral meeting at Trump Turnberry golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, Britain, July 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump discussed the urgent need to get shipping moving again in the Strait of Hormuz during a call on Sunday, a Downing Street spokesperson said.
“The leaders discussed the urgent need to get shipping moving again in the Strait of Hormuz, given the severe consequences for the global economy and cost of living for people in the UK and globally,” the spokesperson for Starmer’s office said in a statement.
“The prime minister shared the latest progress on his joint initiative with President (Emmanuel) Macron to restore freedom of navigation,” the spokesperson added.
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Palestinian Leader’s Loyalists Win Local Elections, Including Some Seats in Gaza
A Palestinian man votes during the municipal election at a polling station in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip April 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Loyalists of President Mahmoud Abbas won most races in Palestinian municipal elections, election officials said on Sunday, in a vote that for the first time in nearly two decades included a city in the Gaza Strip run by rival Hamas.
Saturday’s ballot marked the first elections of any kind in Gaza since 2006 and the first Palestinian polls since the Gaza war began more than two years ago with Hamas’ cross‑border attack on southern Israel.
Abbas’ West Bank–based Palestinian Authority (PA) said the inclusion of the Gaza city Deir al‑Balah, which suffered less damage than other areas of the coastal territory during the war, was intended to show that Gaza was an inseparable part of a future Palestinian state.
The elections, in which voter turnout was low, had been held “at a highly sensitive moment amid complex challenges and exceptional circumstances,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said as results were announced on Sunday.
But they represented “an important first step in a broader national process aimed at strengthening democratic life … and ultimately achieving the unity of the homeland,” he said.
POSSIBLE INDICATOR OF HAMAS SUPPORT
Hamas, which ousted the PA from Gaza in 2007, did not formally nominate candidates in Gaza and boycotted the race in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Fatah’s victory was widely expected.
But some candidates on one of the Deir al-Balah lists were widely seen by residents and analysts as aligned with the movement, making the vote a potential indicator of support for the Islamist group.
Preliminary results showed that the list, known as Deir al‑Balah Brings Us Together, won only two of the 15 seats contested in Gaza.
The Nahdat Deir al‑Balah list, backed by Abbas’ Fatah party and the Western-backed PA, secured six seats. The remaining seats were won by two other Gaza-based groups, Future of Deir al‑Balah and Peace and Building, not affiliated with either faction.
Abbas loyalists swept the election in the West Bank, running unchallenged in many seats.
Fatah spokesperson Abdul Fattah Dawla noted that turnout was close to that for the last municipal elections in the West Bank, in 2022, praising voters for participating despite ongoing violence by Israel.
“By electing figures linked to Fatah, voters appear to be seeking unrestricted international support for municipal governance and a gradual political shift that could extend beyond the local level,” said Palestinian political analyst Reham Ouda.
The recent war has left much of Gaza reduced to rubble, with many residents displaced and focused on survival. Israel has continued conducting strikes despite an October ceasefire.
In Gaza, voter turnout reached just 23 percent, while in the West Bank it was 56 percent, according to Chairman of the Central Elections Commission Rami al‑Hamdallah.
Al‑Hamdallah said some of the ballot boxes and voting equipment did not make it into the enclave because of Israeli security restrictions, though those challenges were overcome.
Hamas’ Gaza spokesperson, Hazem Qassem, downplayed the significance of the election results, saying that they had no impact on wider national issues.